Friday, December 5, 2014

Colour Pop : Review & Swatches

So, have you guys heard of Colour Pop? If you follow any beauty folks on Instagram/are active on Reddit, I feel like you probably have. They seem to be taking over the world of social media and with good reason; they're an LA based company offering lipsticks, lip pencils, and eye shadows for a whopping price of $5/each. They also offer free shipping on orders over $30, which is pretty easy to hit, so they've got that going for them, too. I can't remember where I first found out about Colour Pop, but I think it was on Reddit and the first colour (haha, get it?) I saw was the shade "Creature". It was this glorious dark burgundy shade and after that, I knew I had to order some things.

The Colour Pop website is incredibly easy to navigate and really well built which is awesome considering how new they are. You can search, there are categories, and the photos are great... which I'm usually highly critical of since I'm a product photographer. They also swatch their lip colors on light, medium, and dark skin tones. Now, they don't swatch each shade on all three, but it looks like they're working on that. I placed an order on November 14th, it shipped November 19th (two weekend days in there), and it arrived on November 22nd. Not bad for a company that is still fairly small (I assume).

I don't have a picture of it, because I forgot, but I did receive a little personalized note from them that said "Hi Allison, We're going to call you dandelion. Love, Colour Pop" The order was packed well in an interior box, stuffed with paper (thank god, I can recycle this!), and then in a larger box. Each lipstick, lip pencil, and eye shadow comes in its own little box. I am not going to talk about the eye shadows in this post, I'm going to do a separate post for those, so today will be all about the Lippie Stix and Lip Pencils.

a little dirty... it's been used.

I got the following lip items:

Creature Lippie Stix

Creature Lip Pencil

Brink Lippie Stix

Brink Lip Pencil

Fetch Lippie Stix

Creature is "A deepened blackened burgundy red in a matte finish aka 'a sultry, fierce red for the world dominator' ". For these swatches, I used the lip pencil and the lippie stix together. I need to sharpen the lip pencil... which is why it looks a bit soft on the outlining. Whoops.

The pencil and the lippie stix in Creature apply amazingly and are opaque immediately. I am love with this color and this texture. My lips were slightly chapped when I applied this product for the photo, but you can barely see it! It doesn't cling to the dry patches badly, at all, and it looks lovely on the lips.

A+

Brink is "a warm dusty taupe in a matte finish. Curated by @brittanysuleiman. Inspired by the insta-famous Kylie lip". I won't lie, I bought this specifically for that last line "Kylie lip". I cannot stand the Kardashian clan, but fuck, does Kylie Jenner has great lip colors! This shade turns a little too warm on me to make it a true dusty taupe, but it's still a fantastic color. This was obviously swatched the same day as Creature (all of these swatches were done the same day), so my lips were still slightly chapped when taking these photos. Can you see any flaky skin in these photos? I can't. Amazing. Brink is creamier to apply than Creature, but dries down to a true matte. This shade is also completely opaque upon first swipe, which is fantastic. The only thing that I noticed that miiiight annoy some people is that the lip pencil is slightly darker than the lippie stix; to me this is no big deal for a nude shade and is actually what I prefer, but I realize that some people might not be into that.

A+

Fetch is a "perfect mid- tone warm true pink in a satin finish. Cuz this shade is like so like o.m.g, totally fetch". Ok, I'm going to be completely honest and say that I bought this is because it is called Fetch and I am a HUGE Mean Girls fan. Case in point:

yeah... this happened

I don't own a lot of true pink lipsticks because I don't feel like they look amazing on me. I bought this mostly because of the name, but also because it was a $5 investment into something that I wasn't sure about. This is a satin shade, which is different than Brink and Creature, which are both mattes. This color definitely has a slip to it when applying and it isn't nearly as opaque as the other two. It can easily be built to be opaque, but it takes a bit more effort. This shade, which is a tiny bit milky (meaning that the base is somewhat white), can be a bit patchy. Rubbing your lips together takes care of this issue, but it can still be a pain. I actually do like the color quite a bit, so yay! However... this shade broke when I opened it. Not in a major way, the tip of the stick broke off and not wanting to have to return it and replace it, I just picked it up off the counter and stuck it back on.

B+

So there you go! If I'm being 100% honest with you, I not only will be ordering from Colour Pop again, I already have. I placed another order this morning and got Lumière, their newest shade, along with a few gifts. If you guys are interested, check out their website and scroll around, see if you find anything you like.

this brand looks fantastic, but I'm all the way in Singapore and I'm not sure how I can get my hands on this :( do you know if they do overseas shipping? And have you tried any other products since this post?

I love your review! I like that you took three photos of you wearing each shade. I find that very helpful. Most reviews are just swatches on the hand or close up photos of what the color looks like on the lips, I find it hard to decide just from that. I need to see what they look like on the person so thank you, the colors you picked look great on you!